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Revolution Least Expensive Next-Gen Console

exdeath writes "Today, one of Nintendo's most public faces said the Revolution will stand out from its competition for a reason besides its innovative controller: price. Speaking to CNN/Money correspondent Chris Morris Reggie Fils-Aime, executive vice president of sales and marketing, predicted that the Revolution would be cheaper than both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. How low will Nintendo go? It's hard to tell. Microsoft is selling two Xbox 360 SKUs--the no-frills $299 core Xbox and the $399 standard model with hard drive and wireless remote. In his interview with Morris, Fils-Aime also reiterated that the Revolution will not support high-definition televisions. 'What we'll offer in terms of gameplay and approachability will more than make up for the lack of HD,' he said. Both Microsoft and Sony are making much of the 360 and PS3's HD capabilities. Fils-Aime also implied that the DS will see redesigns, just as the Game Boy Advance has."

2 of 580 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Smart Move by PhoenixFlare · · Score: 5, Informative

    You're not serious, are you? Fixed camera angles, linear gameplay, predictable action sequences .. this is what you consider the 'best game ever'? I think we can find a few more candidates than that to fill the spot of 'best game ever'.

    Could you make it any more obvious that you haven't actually played the game?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_Evil_4

    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Resident+Evil +4+fixed+camera&btnG=Google+Search

    Better luck with your next troll.

  2. Re:No HD support? Wake up... by Miamicanes · · Score: 5, Informative

    As lots of people tend to forget (even people WITH HDTVs):

    * the difference between broadcast NTSC or composite NTSC and studio/dvd-quality NTSC (via s-video) is dramatic and noticeable.

    * the difference between studio/dvd quality NTSC via s-video ("480i60") and 480p60 is night and day. Someone who just had PRK/LASEK the previous day could still tell the difference between the two on a 27" TV twenty feet away in a smoke-filled room.

    * On a natively 720p60 set, 720p60 looks noticeably better than 480p60. On a natively 1080i60 set, 720p60 is almost indistinguishable from 480p60 because the TV downsamples to 540 scanlines, then kell-filters them to prevent flicker. The net result is almost the same amount of vertical detail as 480p60, with only slightly more horizontal detail. Meanwhile, the GPU and CPU are working almost twice as hard.

    * On a natively 720p60 set, 1080i60 is nearly indistinguishable from 480p60, because the TV just throws away half of the scanlines, resamples the 540 that remain up to 720, then resamples the alleged 1920 horizontal pixels to 1280. On a natively 1080i60 set, 1080i60 COULD exhibit greater detail than 480p60... except for the tiny problems of interline twitter (requiring kell filtering), inadequate GPU/CPU power to really pull off their best work at 1920x1080, and the fact that programmers fundamentally don't understand the realities of computer-generated interlaced video and inevitably produce games that look great on the progressive-scan monitors connected to their dev boxen, but have glaring artifacts and deficiencies when viewed on a real interlaced display.

    In short, 1080i60 doesn't have a whole lot to offer more than 480p60 for action-related games due to all the filtering necessary to prevent interline twitter, and inadequate raw GPU/CPU horsepower to really handle 1920x1080 properly. 720p60 has definite potential to offer better-looking games because 1280x720 is still a reasonable resolution as far as the GPU/CPU is concerned... but at the moment, natively 720p60 TVs only represent about 1/3 of the total in America (unfortunately), and 720p60 looks like $#!+ on most natively 1080i60 TVs.

    At the implementation level, upgrading chips capable of 480p60 to 1080i60 is a comparatively small tweak, because most of the increased bandwidth goes into permitting faster pixel-to-pixel color changes. The actual scanrate (~33.75KHz) isn't a whole lot higher than 480p60's (~31.5kHz). Unfortunately, you can't fool Mother Nature... making the leap to 720p60 requires ~45KHz, because the real or metaphorical electron beam has a LOT more ground to cover in the same amount of time. Put another way, you can do some nasty hacks and claim that a given circuit is technically capable of "1080i", even if its REAL capabilities aren't much better than 480p because the horizontal detail will be all smeared and blurred due to inadequate bandwidth... but making the leap to 720p requires real upgrades that cost real money. And ultimately, the 2/3 majority of American HDTV owners whose sets are inherently 1080i won't see much of an improvement anyway, and will probably bitch about games that only support 480p and 720p.

    The REAL surge in "HDTV" console gaming will come in another 2-4 years, once natively-720p TVs have displaced enough older 1080i TVs (at least among gamers who know the difference and care), and Nintendo's NEXT console WILL support 720p (but probably won't bother with 1080i, leading to more waves of grousing and complaining about its lack of "true" support for HDTV).